I always loved this photo of JFK with Nina Krushcheva, wife of Nikita Krushchev. It looks like an amiable meeting of total opposites that would have been considered impossible a few years earlier. The West, which had been in fear of the "reds" for years, started to take to Nikita and his de-Stalinization-program, although The Cold War nearly lead to a nuclear war over Cuba. Both Nina and her husband were very un-American in looks and behavior, and when I look at the photo of her and JFK I get the impression that he was amazed at the very existence of a woman like her: There she was, most likely without as much as a shred of make-up, VERY un-American! 

Wow, that must have been a well-made and thus strong shoe!

Anyway, Nikita was stripped of power in 1964, two years after the death of JFK. What had been The Soviet Union was dissolved by the Russian politician Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. After that, in on the scene stepped Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) who was followed by Vladimir Putin for his first and second term (2000-2008). In 2012 started what by now has been 5 terms for Putin.

Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev having breakfast with a young Putin

I think The West loved Gorbachev, both for his policies and his sort of mild looks. He had the cutest strawberry mark on his forehead and beautiful eyes. Yup, he was adorable! Of course, much of his "cuteness" came from his plans of reforming the "enemy of the cold war", The Soviet Union. Words like "Glasnost" and "Perestrojka" were like honey in the ears of anti-social Westerners who were not alert to what they implied on a deep level: I see them as misleading and placant double-talk that indicated a political change that made the new Russia look more like a Western country without becoming what it indicated.